5 Comments

In other words, setting Iran up with nuclear technology and quite possibly nuclear weapons was perfectly fine as long as the tech was in the hands of a puppet government that we installed and maintained, but once there's the possibility that people who blame us for the aforementioned government might get it then it's time to risk World War III to stop them? That's just ridiculous. Not that I want to see Ahmedinejad or the mullahs with nuclear weapons, but maybe after this last decade we'll finally get it through our heads that puppet governments are way more trouble than they're worth...

from chomsky - "Thirty years ago, however, when Kissinger was secretary of state for President Gerald Ford, he held that "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals". Last year Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post asked Kissinger about his reversal of opinion. Kissinger responded with his usual engaging frankness: "They were an allied country."

In 1976 the Ford administration "endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Teheran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium — the two pathways to a nuclear bomb", Linzer wrote. The top planners of the Bush administration, who are now denouncing these programmes, were then in key national security posts: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Iranians are surely not as willing as the West to discard history to the rubbish heap. They know that the United States, along with its allies, has been tormenting Iranians for more than 50 years, ever since a US-UK military coup overthrew the parliamentary government and installed the Shah, who ruled with an iron hand until a popular uprising expelled him in 1979.

The Reagan administration then supported Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, providing him with military and other aid that helped him slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iranians (along with Iraqi Kurds). Then came President Clinton’s harsh sanctions

Yeppers..I knew it and remember it well. Jimmy Carter even addresses this in one of his latest books. This is exactly why Iran gets offended/angry when we tell them they can't develop nuclear technology. The USA however, is developing more and more WHILE we threaten them. We ignore the nuclear non-proliferations treaty and yet expect others to uphold it and then wonder why other nations get annoyed with us.